iwl3945 cannot connect to hidden ssid WPA enterprise with Hardy 2.6.24-23 - Regression

Since the original posting of this bug I have been able to test on a Hidden SSID WPA Personal network, and did not notice the same issues. The bug seems to be limited to Hidden SSID WPA Enterprise (I have not had the opportunity to test on a non-hidden SSID WPA Enterprise though).

Please let me know of any additional information I can provide or tests I can run.

There is plenty of duplicate bug records on launchpad concerning intel 3945/4965 wifi problems, that seems to be more obvious with wpa-aes (probably tkip is not used in "enterprise" networks)...

Maybe you may search a bit for them before setting this one in the closing antichamber...

Is there a problem with tests in ubuntu to see such regressions coming to updates of a 9/10 months old LTS for such a common intel hardware... uncorrected since 1 month (hopefully, 2.6.24-22 still work)!?

Regards

@John -- this problem showed up on kernel upgrade from 2.6.24-22.45 to 2.6.24-23.48, and booting with the old kernel returns functionality. So we have to be suspicious of the changes from one to the other.

We have had a look at the changes and nothing obvious is jumping out. The delta between these two kernels primarily consists of the three stable updates:

    2.6.24.4
    2.6.24.5
    2.6.24.6

It would be good to try and identify which of these deltas is the issue here. The simplest way to test this would be to try the mainline kernels at these levels and see which are affected. If you could test the the mainline kernels at the URL below for the levels above and report back that would help us find this regression.

    http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.24.4
    http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.24.5
    http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.24.6

Sure thing. Should I just download and install the image and header debs manually using gdebi, or is there a way to add those as a repository so they can go through apt? Sorry, I don't have much experience installing "debs" not from the repository.

They are plain debs. So yes just grab the linux-image and install that, you only need the headers if you have nvidia or ati binary drivers (ie those which use dkms to install). Thanks.

I tried installing 2.6.24.4 using gdebi, and got an "Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: wireless-crda" error.

I installed the packages using "dpkg -i --force-depends packagename" as Andy suggested in #ubuntu-bugs. I have not installed the headers packages. My wireless card is unrecognized in the mainline kernels linked to above.

Here's the dmesg when booting one of those kernels (2.6.24.5). I made sure to ln -s to the /lib/firmware/2.6.24-22-generic directory, so there are /lib/firmware/2.6.24-02062404-generic, 2.6.24-02062405-generic , and 2.6.24-02062406-generic directories with the firmware, yet my wireless card still seems to be unrecognized.

I'll just add that I was able to test using an Intrepid Live CD (kernel 2.6.27-7-generic) and Jaunty alpha 4, and the problem does not exist in those kernels.

@John -- i have rebuilt the mainline kernels for 2.6.24 with hopefully closer configs. Perhaps you could try the latest of those to see if that recognises your hardware. If it does then we could perform the test with those new versions.

John confirms that this bug does not exist in Intrepid or Jaunty, so closing the Jaunty task as Invalid.

@Andy - I tried the latest 2.6.24.4 build that you posted, and my wireless card was recognized, and I was able to connect to the WPA Enterprise Hidden SSID network, so that seems to check out. Let me know when the .5 and .6 are posted and I'll check those out.

I should also clarify, that for intrepid I only tested the livecd, which has the 2.6.27-7-generic kernel. I have not tested the more recent Intrepid kernels (-9 and -11).

@John -- the rest of the 2.6.27 kernels are built. So if you would be able to test those. Thanks.

@Andy - With the new versions of the .24 kernels posted, I was able to connect to the hidden ssid WPA Enterprise network on all 3 (.4, .5, and .6). I tried the .24-23 kernel again just to make sure I'm not seeing things, and it still does not connect. I also tried linking /lib/firmware/2.6.24-02062406-generic to /lib/firmware/2.6.24-23-generic to check if it was a firmware issue, rather than a kernel issue, and I was still able to connect.

Are there any ubuntu-specific patches to the kernel that occured that I should test as well?

Ok looking at the binary for linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24, we see the following:

    ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/
    ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/mac80211/
    ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/mac80211/compatible/
    ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/mac80211/compatible/net/
    ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/mac80211/compatible/net/mac80211/
    ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/mac80211/compatible/net/mac80211/iwlwifi_mac80211.ko
    ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/mac80211/compatible/net/mac80211/iwlwifi_rc80211_simple.
    ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/iwlwifi/
    ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/iwlwifi/compatible/
    ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/iwlwifi/compatible/iwl3945.ko
    ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/iwlwifi/compatible/iwl4965.ko

It appears we have a poor linkage internally between modules. Will prepare a test version of linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24 to see if this is the source of the issue.

Could you test the version of linux-ubuntu-modules from the URL below:

    http://people.ubuntu.com/~apw/lp327431-hardy/

If this does not work could you collect lsmod output from the failing install and from any one of the mainline kernels which did work for you, and report them here.

@John -- were you able to test the linux-ubuntu-modules images posted above yet?

@Andy -- Sorry for the extreme delay, took a while to get power issues sorted out on my laptop. I should be able to test the kernel/modules you posted sometime today.

@Andy -- I finally got around to testing, and here's the lsmod output. I've included the lsmod from the 2.6.24.6 mainline kernel (where I could connect), from the 2.6.24-24-generic kernel with the ubuntu-modules you posted (couldn't connect) and the 2.6.24-22-generic (with ubuntu modules) kernel from the repository, where I could connect. The files should be adequately named.

I can confirm this bug. With kernel 2.6.24-22-generic the wpa enterprise connection works fine. If I boot 2.6.24-23-generic oder boot 2.6.24-24-generic i can't connect to the hidden wpa enterprise connection.

This bug is still listed as "Incomplete". As the original bug reporter, is there any more information that I need to submit? Andy, if you no longer have time to work on this, would it be possible for you to pass it along to someone who does? I really appreciate all of your work and help so far in this process.

It seems this problem can be avoided by thus who configure the network in the old way, using /etc/network/interfaces, instead of using NM. There may be many reasons for this, mine is to have network going up without needing a local user to log in, because I often use SSH remote sessions.

So, in the wlan0 configuration made as usual, I added a pre-up configuration:
pre-up ifconfig wlan0 up

So the problem could be related to a WPA configuration sometimes starting with a wlan0 still down.

I don't know if NM users can handle this easily but if someone from ubuntu want to take into account this concern that makes hardy so unstable under the widely used intel wifi since the beginning (more or less depending on kernel iterations)... I hope it could help.

@Yann,

I'm not sure if I followed all of that, but is that something that would change between different kernels? I can switch to the -22 kernel (or any of the mainline kernels) and then I can access the hidden WPA Enterprise, kernels -23 and -24 give me the issue.

If the issue is related to the wpa config sometimes starting with wlan0 still down, is there a way for me to restart the wpa config once wlan0 is up?

Thanks.

I'm not sure what new happened, but I am no longer affected by this bug. I don't remember a kernel or network manager update coming through around the time it started working again, but it does.

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu Hardy) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]